Electronic keyboards and other electronic musical instruments are known. Many electronic keyboard instruments generate digital data compatible with the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) standard. Many electronic musical instruments also provide an automatic accompaniment or background which is played by the instrument at the performer's request. With many known electronic musical instruments, in order to make organized melodic sounds which would be considered "music", the performer must actually be able to play the instrument or at least be able to strike the instrument's "actuators" (i.e., keys of a music keyboard, strings of a stringed instrument such as a guitar, etc.) in "time", meaning in some order and timing appropriate for the time signature and tempo of the piece of music, song, or melody being played by the performer on the instrument. With other known musical instruments, the performer makes music by keying a pre-recorded melody on and off whenever desired.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,099,738 to Hotz discloses a MIDI-compatible electronic keyboard instrument that does not allow the musician to strike a wrong note. During the interval of time in which a particular chord is being played, the instrument generates, in response to the musician's depression of any key, a "correct" note (i.e., pitch) in that chord or a "correct" note in a scale which is compatible with that chord. Like other known electronic musical instruments, the times when notes are played are determined entirely by when the musician depresses a key on the keyboard. If the musician does not or cannot depress the keys at appropriate times, the result will be "correct" notes played in an unorganized, non-musical sequence. The musician thus is given "creative input" as to the time when notes are played but does not have the option of playing an incorrect chord or note.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,393,926 to Johnson discloses a virtual MIDI guitar system. The system has a personal computer which utilizes a CD-ROM player to play back a stored audio and video accompaniment selected by a user. The accompaniment is a recording of a song with the guitar track omitted. The personal computer stores the guitar track of the song. The guitar has strings and a tremolo bar, and a user's manipulation of the strings and tremolo bar sends digital data to the personal computer. The personal computer uses that data to access and play back relevant portions of the guitar-only track, as described below. The personal computer also mixes the guitar track with the audio track from the CD-ROM player and broadcasts it through speakers while at the same time displaying the video image on a monitor connected to the personal computer. The guitar-only track contains all of the guitar notes in the sequence in which they are to be played, and it is partitioned into a sequence of frames. The guitar player is able to generate only those notes that are within the current frame and only in the order in which they appear in the current frame, "current" being determined by a clock variable which tells the elapsed time since the song began. The pace at which the notes are played within the current frame is determined by when the user strikes the strings such that the user may be able to get somewhat out of alignment with the accompaniment in any particular frame and may have some flexibility to modify or experiment with the timing of the notes of the guitar track within a frame. If the player does not play the guitar during a period associated with a given frame, none of the music within that frame will be generated. Striking strings of the guitar thus causes an otherwise silent, running, pre-recorded guitar-only track to be heard, and the guitar thus essentially operates as an on/off or play/silent button for the pre-recorded guitar track.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,074,182 to Capps et al. discloses a guitar-like instrument with encoded musical material that includes a plurality of multi-part background songs and a plurality of solo parts or "riffs" that harmonize with the background songs. A read only memory (ROM) in the instrument stores a program and the encoded musical material. Once the user has selected and started a background song, the user can trigger a guitar riff by operating some switches on the instrument. Manipulating the switches thus causes one of a plurality of pre-stored riffs to play over the selected background song.